1. Field of the Invention
The Invention relates to the field of call centers, and more particularly, to the surveillance of agents and the evaluation of tasks assigned thereto.
2. Description of Related Art
For many businesses, the primary interface between the company and its customers is the contact center. In this role as the “face” of the company, the contact center is a crucial component that directly affects the company's overall success. One negative customer experience can forever jeopardize the relationship.
To ensure that customers receive a high level of service, contact center operators typically employ quality managers who monitor a random sampling of calls. Such systems and methods are generally described in patents and patent applications in class 379, subclass 265.6 of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and International Class H04M 3/00. However, listening to a random sample is, at best, a compromise solution between the desired quality goal and the expense of a large staff of reviewers. To further illustrate the point, consider the following example scenario:                If a contact center monitors 5% of calls, and only 5% of those calls are bad or exceptionally good, then most of the calls being monitored are benign.        
This example shows that the quality monitoring team spends the majority of their time listening to benign calls while the calls that most need to be reviewed are missed. Without a sufficiently large sample of calls, important trends may not be apparent.
The key then to an effective quality monitoring program is the ability to review 100% of calls, without the associated cost of additional staff. Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for enhancing the monitoring of audio communications such as agent-customer interactions in connection with a call or contact center.